Oedipus the King and Antigone, by Sophocles, represent the various responsibilities and characteristics of women, as well as how society and men affect their positions. Jocasta and Eurydice demonstrate the role of wives in ancient Greece, while Jocasta and Antigone highlight the roles that women occasionally take as rebels. The roles of wives and rebels illustrate the strong contrast between the societal expectation of weak women and their ability to fight against men’s and god’s tyranny; and the play Antigone demonstrates this more powerfully than Oedipus the King. By revealing women and their different standings in a society, Sophocles shows how they are often objectified to demeaning attributes and are expected to be inferior to men.
Throughout the two plays, wives represent and struggle with the societal norms of women being vulnerable and fragile. Eurydice, the wife of Creon, is only introduced one scene
…show more content…
She is not afraid of the most powerful man in her community, and even when faced with the punishment of death, she continues to battle against the idea of men being more capable and possessing more power. Antigone highlights how the expectations of ancient Greeks were that a woman was to silently obey the male figures in her life. Antigone confronts the false ideals of her time, and demonstrates that a rebel and a hero should have no gender associated with it and that a woman’s power and abilities has no bounds. Antigone not only is able to show Creon and every other man in Thebes that she is just as strong as they are, she displays piety while doing so. She fights against the law of man, and obeys the law of the gods. Antigone plays a more compelling rebel because she dies for a cause and proves to everybody how influential a woman can be, while Jocasta only shows impiety and retreats back into the role of a stereotypical powerless